Keen to sell but little interest. Advice needed please!

netwalk · 23 August 2006 at 11:39AM

HI, I'm looking for advice on where to go next with selling our home as it seems to be taking ages. A little background; my wife and I are in the process of emigrating to New Zealand with all our visas sorted but the only thing holding us back is selling our home in Lincolnshire. It is a 1980's 4 bedroom detached house and around a year ago we had installed a new fitted kitchen and 2 new bathroom suites while in January this year the house was professionally decorated top to bottom with carpets fitted throughout.

Following the advice on this site we had 3 agents to view and value the property in March giving valuations between £260k and £280k with them all saying the house should sell quickly as it is "immaculately presented". We went with an agent we have past experience of and put the house on the market at £265k with an expectation of accepting an offer for £250k (we are that keen to move and there is no chain!). There were no viewings at all in April so we dropped the price to £250k and have had just 7 viewings since and no offers.

The feedback, according to the agent, has been 100% positive with people loving the house, decoration, position (rural) etc and not a single comment that it is overpriced; just no offers! I put the house onto Houseladder which has generated a couple of silly leads (part exchange for a £600k house in Surrey etc) but don't know what to do next. Yes, we could just about afford to drop the asking price to £240k and hope to get £235k but that would be loads less than the valuations given by the "professionals" just 5 months ago and who's to say it will then sell? We read in the press each week that the market is fast moving and average properties are rising by 10% pa but there is no sign of that here.

The only crumb of comfort is that is the local area (Louth, LN11) few other properties appear to be selling either and the ones that are are renovation jobs. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get more interest in the property and that elusive offer? Should we go dual agent (if our current one is willing)? Swap agents? Advertise privately? Lower the price further? Anything? Everything? Or is it just a case that properties in this price bracket take months to sell and we're being unrealistic expecting anything quicker?

I would really welcome some advice as we are getting desperate to move and start our new lives down under.

Thanks in advance,

Julian

AndrewSmith · 23 August 2006 at 11:58AM

The 3 main factors that will determine the saleability of a property are:

Location
Presentation
Price

These are not mutually exclusive however and it could be a combination of all 3 or one on it's own.

It's time to have a frank talk with you agent and get him round. Get them to be completely honest with you and tell you which of the 3 as above is impacting the lack of interest in your property. Tell him that you want him to be completely honest with you, and that you will act accordingly with their instructions.

Also find out what marketing strategy they have in place and how they are promoting your property.

After all an agent who simply puts a picture in the papaer and waits for the phone to ring is not what you want.

Andy

lypsey · 23 August 2006 at 1:38PM

My advice is to start to relaise the market is totally !!!!!!ed and reduce your price.

richgirl · 23 August 2006 at 1:43PM

If your desperate, theres always the auction.

meanmachine_2 · 23 August 2006 at 1:50PM

Lincolnshire is a tough market. It's one of the cheapest for a reason - low local wages and awful links to the south.

When the market is booming, it's OK there. When it isn't booming, I believe the county is one of the first to suffer.

money_savy · 23 August 2006 at 2:02PM

why not try having an open house day particularly when your house is presented in such a good condition.....at the end of the day, it is the matter of getting right people to view the house ...good luck

Leighthal · 23 August 2006 at 2:24PM

I also think the answer is Location

Lincolnshire is a tough market. It's one of the cheapest for a reason - low local wages and awful links to the south.

I live in Grimsby which is perhaps 10-15 mins drive from Louth.At least I have a rail link.Louth is a beautiful little town(did'nt it just win an award?) but its still abit remote.How about renting it out?..or will this hamper your plans in NZ

Zammo · 23 August 2006 at 2:40PM

netwalk wrote:

Yes, we could just about afford to drop the asking price to £240k and hope to get £235k but that would be loads less than the valuations given by the "professionals" just 5 months ago and who's to say it will then sell? We read in the press each week that the market is fast moving and average properties are rising by 10% pa but there is no sign of that here.

Estate agents are notorious for giving high valuations to get you on their books. My advice would be to bite the bullet and drop the price. I suspect you'll still make money on your original purchase price and with another IR rise penciled in for before the end of the year you may find it even harder to sell in a few months time.

House prices might be rising by 10% in London, but I can assure you they are not in any other area in the country, in fact there are many places experiencing a drop in prices.

Get_Real_2 · 23 August 2006 at 2:54PM

hi netwalk

How about ringing a selection of estate agents that have local knowledge and asking them about the market in general terms. Best bet is to get someone else to do this for you, so that they don't recognise you as a seller. Get them to discuss the state of the market without making it clear whether you are a buyer or a seller, if possible. I have recently done this regarding a property belonging to an elderly relative which hasn't generated much interest and no serious offers after 15 weeks. It's surprising what you can elicit without submitting too much detail about why you're enquiring.

One agent said to me "the market is buoyant, but not what it was 2 years ago" and another said that they currently are taking about 15 - 20 weeks to generate a couple of decent offers. I'm talking about a completely different area to Lincolnshire and a different kind of property etc, but you get my drift.

:cool:

Another point, sorry if too obvious, but is your agent linked to rightmove.co.uk. Not all agents are, and this may be a disadvantage for an area like yours.

mi-key · 24 August 2006 at 7:44AM

I think EA will spin you any load of bull to get your house on with them - they'll overvalue it, tell you they have X amount of buyers desperate for a house just like it, tell you how great the market is, and how prices are rising and will do forever.

I agree with the post above about location, price and presentation - you cant change the location, the presentation sounds fine, so the only thing you can change is the price.

Any house will sell quickly if the price is right - what it was valued at 5 months ago is irrelevant as we have had one ( and another imminent ) interest rate rise since then, so since you put it on the market your house has got more expensive for buyers.

It might be time to sit down and ask yourself what you really want - i.e. how much did you pay for the house, how much do you need to move to NZ, is moving quickly more important than ( maybe ) getting a few thousand extra for the house ?

Ignore what agents are saying, ignore what other house have or havent sold for - you're selling your house, not someone elses, or one that sold a year ago.

Also consider, that places like Lincolnshire are unlikely to see prices going up - the longer your house sits on the market, the less it will become worth.

Perhaps it is worth taking it off for a few weeks, working out what you really want to do, then putting it back on priced for a quick sale ?

netwalk · 29 August 2006 at 11:30AM

Firstly, many thanks to everyone who has read this thread and provided their opinions, views and advice. It is most welcome. :T
The overriding impression I get is firstly that on the whole there is a low opinion of Estate Agents on this board and that secondly the only thing that is near guaranteed to get a property moving is to lower the price.

Zammo wrote:

Estate agents are notorious for giving high valuations to get you on their books. My advice would be to bite the bullet and drop the price.

Hopefully good advice as we dropped another £4,000 off the price on Thursday to bring it to £246,000 although it didn't drum up any interest over the long Bank Holiday weekend. August is apparently a slow month so roll on September.

Get_Real wrote:

Another point, sorry if too obvious, but is your agent linked to rightmove.co.uk. Not all agents are, and this may be a disadvantage for an area like yours.

Thankfully yes. We are using Nottingham Property Services and all their properties are on Rightmove. They are even sending us the page view and click through stats on a fortnightly basis and the conversion rate has recently been over 10% which is apparently way above their average, but still no offers. The listing on Rightmove looks good in my opinion but any comments would be welcome:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property/6284518

We have even listed privately on Houseladder

http://www.houseladder.co.uk/SearchEngine/PropertyDetailsForSale.aspx?PId=93826

and the new site Cut The Middleman

http://www.cutthemiddleman.co.uk/view.php?ID=138

so hopefully exposure is not the issue. The house is prominently displayed in the Estate Agent's window and featured weekly in the local press. I'm not even sure going dual agency will have much impact as all our local Estate Agents are within 2 minutes walk of each other and buyers just go from one to another. The viewers we have had so far have all been very complimentary about our agents!

mi-key wrote:

I think EA will spin you any load of bull to get your house on with them - they'll overvalue it, tell you they have X amount of buyers desperate for a house just like it, tell you how great the market is, and how prices are rising and will do forever.

It is a shame that you and others feel this is the case and the optimist in me hopes you are wrong however it does seem a common occurrence/complaint. These agents earn £'000s from the sale of each property and should be able to be trusted to provide an honest and frank valuation of a property and the market. It is difficult as a seller not to look at how other areas and other properties are valued and mirror those expectation against your own property. In our village a couple of other houses have gone on the market since ours, a 3 bedroom cottage for £30k less that we would value at £100k less and a 4 bedroom house for £150k more that doesn't look much different to ours so who knows where the market stands?

money_savy wrote:

why not try having an open house day particularly when your house is presented in such a good condition.....at the end of the day, it is the matter of getting right people to view the house ...good luck

Sounds like a good idea. We saw loads of these over in New Zealand earlier this year but they don't seem so common here. How would you consider advertising it other than putting a sign up outside the house?

Finally, once again thanks for your input. Any further advice would be welcome as well as your comments on the adverts linked to above. Anything else we should include or exclude?

Thanks to one and all,

Julian

Keen to sell but little interest. Advice needed please!

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